Currently pondering whether or not to update to the last update or wait a little longer for the next one - does anyone know when that will be?

When will the new Internet Tablet 2006 Rom be coming out? The one with IM built in.

I think that there hasn't been any official statements about the release date for the new software. Other than that it should come out in 2006.

Does anyone have some secret internal information?

I seem to recall a reference in December to 2006 Q2, which I guess would mean "the very end of June."

But this is not inside information, and in fact I don't vouch for my memory at all.

Now now, the 770 started shipping in Nov. Which should mean by mid Dec 2006 the update will be available.

Mostly oout of laziness, I've put off upgrading to 2005.45-8. So I just took a look at the download areas on mameo.org and at http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,79636,00.html and found this:

Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51_13.bin 27-Jan-06 | 59.1 MB | English

(file is listed as Nokia_770_3.2005.51-13.bin on the other system, size and md5 hashes are identical)

There's also a PDF.

NO idea what is in this and I don't see anything in the maemo user, developer or announce archives.

No idea at all? Is it not the same file, just with a different name? Heck, the only thing different about the name is the underscores instead of dots and dashes (edit: and the "SE"... my bin filename, incidentally, is Nokia_770_SE2005_3_2005_51-13.bin, which includes the "SE" and a dash).

I don't know anything about the release schedule, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Presuming that the next release is going to be a 2006 release, my off-the-cuff guess is that it won't come until Spring, when VOIP and IM arrive. I too check every day for a new release, but I also try not to kid myself.

Might as well just take the plunge and go with the stabler week-51 version.

gnuite - yes, I noticed the name similarity and they are obviously the same image. However, there is no information on what is new in 51-13 relative to November's 45-8. I went ahead and loaded 51-13 anyway, on the assumption Nokia wouldn't put a really bad image onto their main download site. So far, it appears stable and the news reader seems to be working more smoothly. I've noticed a few instances in the web browser where I have to close the browser to get it to "take" a request to go to a new page from the bookmarks. I expect there will be some info on 51-13 posted shortly. In the future, release notes with the images would be a nice thing to have.

And no, I am not holding my breath for 2006-anything.

51-13 was available on the site from 30 dec. last year already. I wonder why the timestamp is changed to 27-jan-06..

I'd like to suggest that the people maintaining and updating Maemo need to be a little more agressive with giving us updates. This is especially important for allowing a large number of X apps that were written to use the X core fonts. The subset of X that's implemented on the 770 breaks (i.e., drops compatibility with) the X core fonts we are required to upgrade our X apps from the X core fonts to the Freetype fonts supported by the FreeType2, fontconfig and Xft. In a world where you (i.e., the people behind the Maemo project) take something away (X core font compatibility) you need to give something in return (i.e., a tutorial on how to replace X core fonts with Freetype2 fonts and a frequent release schedule of all of the components necessary to write X apps using the FreeType 2 fonts, the Freetype library, the fontconfig library and the Xft library).

There are a mountain of fixes to things that are broken in a more more recent version of the FreeType project with a HUGE amount of fixes, a devel release of the Fontconfig project with a HUGE amount of fixes, the current version (since a year ago, already) of the Xft library.

In the world of UNIX, Linux, BSD & X it has long been a rule that when you release something new and better that it doesn't break what people are using. Microsoft may do that but that's not the way it's done over on this side of the valley. To repeat, Maemo developers - if you're going to 'break' something (core X font support) then you need to give something back, or else a lot of applications are no longer going to work. There's frustration all around that the apps for the 770 aren't appearing fast enough and that the old apps no longer work. How about updating the Maemo packages in at least these three areas? There is a LOT about these packages that is broken until you do this and I am personally really frustrated that unless and until you all make the effort to upgrade these packages then I am wasting good money to try to make my software work on top of a small mountain of broken library code that, even though it's been fixed, you guys haven't bothered to upgrade to it.